55 



xy 







SPEECHES 



OF 



HON. MARCUS A. SMITH, 



OF ARIZONA, 



DELIVERED IN 



THE HOUSE OF REPEESENTATIYES, 

AprU 7tli, 1898, and June 15th, 1898. 



THE REORGAKIZATIOX OF THE ARMY AND 
OUR REIiATIOIs^S WITH SPAHST, 



AND 



THE HAWAIIA:N^ QUESTIO^Sr. 



"We had better admit our territories and encourngc their develapmcnt before 
we begin doubtful deals in islandic real estate." 
"To refuse self-government in this country is a political crime." 



AVASHIlSrO XON. 

1 8 ij 8 . 



co^ 






68603 






The Reorgrauizatiou of the Reg:ular Army. 



SPEECH 



HON MARCUS A. SMITH, 

OF ARIZONA, 

In the House of EEPRESENTAii^rES, 

Thursday, April 7, 1898, 

On the bill (H. R. 9353) for the better organization of the lino of the Army of 
the United States. 

Mr. SMITH of Arizona said: 

Mr. Speaker: This bill for the reorganization of the Army does 
not meet my entii-e approbation. It is called a ' ' Regular Army " 
bill, when in fact it is a Volunteer Army at last. Why not make 
it a Volunteer Army bill and let the recruits under officers of 
their own selection go forthwith their pride of locality to fight, if 
need be, the battles of our country? Under this bill few, if any, 
brave, ambitious men will enlist. Their identity and that of their 
company will be lost. Without pride in the name of their State — 
their locality — their neighbors, who, shoulder to shoulder with 
them in deeds of daring, shall carry to honor their country's ban- 
ner — I say without these incentives the recruits under this bill, 
instead of being the best, will, I fear, prove the worst soldiers we 
could possibly enlist. Yet I refuse to oppose my committee on 
this only difference between it and me. And I am all the more 
willing to surrender my judgment because if things go on as 
they have been going, we will bear a disgraceful peace and possi- 
bly apologize to Spain for sending the Maine to the peaceful har- 
bor of Cuba. This bill naturally brings us to a consideration of 
the necessity that prompts it, and in dealing with that question I 
ask the indulgence for a few moments of this House of Represent- 
atives. 

Mr. Speaker, American honor has been sacrificed on the altar of 
Mammon. In the interest of stock gamblers masquerading as 



•'business men'' we have for more than a year suffered every out- 
rage that insolence could suggest at the hands of Spain, and still 
we find this Administration has been advocating peace and beg- 
ging for time in which to force the patriots in Cuba to make terms 
with their brutal oppressors. Our inaction under all conditions 
facing us has been simply disgraceful to us as a nation; but let us 
hope we have saved the " business interests " of the country. It 
eeems that this sam.e "business interest " knows much more about 
the course the Executive is to pursue than His Excellency has seen 
fit to disclose to either House of Congress. The President has not 
taken Congress into his confidence in the great question which so 
vitally concerns the dignity and honor of the United States. 

He asked Congress for §50,000,000, and we gave it without a dis- 
Benting vote in either House. What did we do it for? 

Was it to scare Spain or was it to fight Spain? We gave him 
our confidence and he sends us a message so utterly useless, so 
wanting in information, so void of suggestion that a deep sense 
of disappointment swept over every Jrue loyal American heart 
in this Hall. And what are we now to expect? Will we need 
this Army for which this bill provides? Will we need the Navy 
we are purchasing when the President, by general well-accredited 
rumor, is to-day writing another peace message and begging the 
representatives of the people for more and more tim,e in which, I 
presume, he and Spain can force the Cuban patriots to terms satiS' 
factory to Spain and the " business interests" of the New York 
and London stock exchanges. 

Personally I have long admired the President of the United 
States. I had hoped much for the Americanism of his Adminis- 
tration. I desired to see it stand in our relations with Spain and 
Cuba in striking contrast with that which disgraced us under 
Cleveland. But our hopes have been cruelly disappointed. There 
has not been two days within the last thirty when any member of 
Congress or any citizen of this Republic could guess what attitude 
the President would assume on the next two days. The stock 
exchange would show peace when we here were expecting war. 

Peace was the proper guess, and no wonder, when we consider 
the surroundings of the Chief Executive of the nation. Look at 
his Cabinet, oh, my countrymen, and weep! How he ever got 

346] 



them, the Lord only knows. That they are all gentlemen. 1 have 
no earthly doubt. Theyare too gentle. That is the trouble. They 
no doubt represent the "business interests," and that ought to 
satisfy us. Most Presidents have selected statesmen for their 
Cabinet. One President discovered statesmen for his, but it has 
been left to the present Executive to invent them. 

Now, let us review in the light or darkness of what I have said 
our relations with Spain. Let us see whether the $50^000,000 was 
a necessary investment and whether the present bill is needed. It 
depends on the question whether or not these United States are 
beyond insult as a nation. Sirs, I confess a deep sympathy with 
the struggling patriots of Cuba. No man can indulge this senti- 
ment with more sincerity than one coming from a Territory kept 
out of the Union by the same conservative policy of delay which 
has starved Cuba almost into subjection; kept out by the "busi- 
ness interest" which holds the Republican party in the hollow of 
its hand; prevented by this very Congress from exercising the 
right to elect their own officers; held under the hard hand of car- 
petbag rule and treated, so far as liberty is concerned, as cruelly 
as Spain has treated the Cubans. I say, seeing these things and 
living under these conditions, I confess to a deep sympathy with 
the unhappy island at the door of our Gulf. 

But as much as these sentiments oppress my heart, I feel a 
deeper sympathy with our Kepublic, administered as it now is, 
for shame is mingled with it, and I cry with the Roman states- 
man, "How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience?" If 
the "business interest" does not otherwise dictate to its servants, 
it seems that war is imminent if not inevitable. 

When Weyler's brutal order was issued, it was our time to act 
without delay. When our commerce with Cuba long ago was 
almost utterly ruined, it was our time to act with American 
energy and force. When in February, 1897, as told by Richard 
Harding Davis in the New York Journal, young ladies were 
stripped and searched on board an American vessel by Spanish 
soldiers or policemen, after two similar outrages on shore, it was 
every American's time to act. 

When the property of American citizens was destroyed by Spain 
and citizens of the United States imprisoned in her dungeons. 



6 

vrithont trial and withont apology and without compensation for 
tbe outrage, it was the time for the President to speak the United 
States language to Spain in the cannon's breath, if need be. All 
these insults were received with disgraceful equanimity and these 
epochs for action allowed to pass. A criminal conservatism, en- 
forced, I believe, with the other common people of this country, 
by bondholders and stock gamblers, has cost us our national 
honor and poor Cuba 300,000 souls. 

A halting and uncertain Executive policy, backed by the wis- 
dom of the Cabinet I have described, urged delay in recognition 
of Cuban belligerency, prevented; by the aid of the Speaker of 
this House, the declaration of Cuban independence, and exercised a 
diplomacy so weak or cowardly that our dead of the Maine, from 
their wandering graves, can admonish us though their voices are 
still. 

While the " business interests " on the Stock Exchange are being 
protected, 10,000 helpless babes have been tugging at empty though 
willing breasts until death has come^ welcome visitant to relieve 
the victims of the greater woe of hunger. Such is the harvest you 
reapers have gathered. Such will ever be the result when business 
prudence in great emergencies is allowed to usurp the place where 
action and courage should rule. 

Our proud battle ship, riding in fancied security the waters of 
a peaceful harbor, is blown to atoms by Spanish treachery, our 
poor sailor boys sent to an ignominious death, and the question 
involved in this awful crime against us all is subrogated to the 
*' business interests" of the country, and the President coolly in- 
forms Congress of the murder and quits at that without one single 
recommendation, and in all the later correspondence with Spain 
which has not been withheld from us she not even expresses a 
regret or confesses a sympathy over these dead heroes. 

Across that center aisle in many a breast beats a heart in sym- 
pathy with mine. But what can you do? You meet and rebel at 
night, but come in next day and vote against a resolution declar- 
ing the independence of Cuba. You meet and rebel again, but 
you come in and hang your hats and backbones on the same peg, 
and come with all the force of a jelly-fish under the eye of your 
great leader and let the patriots starve while you wait the pleas- 

3463 



ure of the Chair. This may be good politics, but it is not pure 
imtriotism or decent humanity. 

My countrymen, what a beautiful spectacle has been made of 
us on the field of diplomac}'. The President, we have been in- 
formed, has brought the insurgents of Cuba and Spain nearly 
close enough to settle their differences on a money basis. In the 
meantime, at the expense of millions of dollars, we have been 
policing our coast to prevent any aid reaching the pati-iots. Thus 
we have been the ally of Spain, and are still such in trying to 
bring these warring people together and lay the heavy hand of 
taxation— not voluntary — on those who have risked all and lost 
nearly all in their glorious battle in the holy cause of liberty. 

While these diplomatic negotiations were going on and we wero 
preparing for war on the ground of humanity, Spain makes her 
Spanish promise to retract Weyler's bloody order, to feed the re- 
concentrados, to return them to their wonted avocations, and 
deliver every charity which our pity or generosity might forward. 
She has thus met the gravest charge the President seems to have 
had against her, for the murder of the Maine is left for future 
negotiation— diplomatic, I presume. 

My God! are we to arbitrate a question of blood out of regard 
for dollars? Are we to receive an Iscariot piece of silver for the 
betrayal of our country's honor? I speak in no party sense. I 
speak as an American urging as best I can the exercise of the true 
unpolitical American spirit which I feel animates your breasts. 

These delays have starved Cuba and disgraced us. Your senile 
diplomacy has met the fate of fools. Even Spain has overmatched 
us. I commend the courage of this Congress to our sailors and 
soldiers as an example to shun, or to our disgrace will be added 
the humiliation of defeat. 

I am here reminded of a bit of history touching our relations 
with Spain which I can not recite without a deep feeling of 
shame. Do you remember that the Virginius in 1873 was escorted 
out of the harbor of Aspinwall by two American men-of-war, thus 
acknowledging that the ship was an American ship? She was, when 
on the high seas, sailing under the American flag, carrying an Amer- 
ican charter, seized by a Spanish man-of-war and taken as a prize 
into Santiago de Cuba, and when she arrived, without any trial, 

3i63 



8 

but on the order of the commanding colonel of the Spanish troops, 
fifty-odd sailors were taken off board, landed on the shore, stood 
np against a brick wall, and cruelly shot to death. 

The United States demanded and received the ship, and she was 
sunk off Cape Hatteras in a storm, as reported; but it is believed 
she was scuttled, as her very structure was evidence of her Ameri- 
can build and prima facie American ownership. This high-handed 
act was done by Spain in pursuance of her pronunciamento that 
any ship caught aiding the Cuban insurgents should be treated as 
pirates. Spain never denied the American ownership, but de- 
clared her a piratical craft and murdered the men on board. 
Two years afterwards, by the same diplomacy we are now prac- 
ticing, we accepted $80,000 as full indemnity. 

No wonder that the caricaturists of Spain represented America 
as a hog with a large dollar mark on the rear. They have the 
right to still so represent an Administration who will longer par- 
ley with the questions at difference between us. The dollar mark 
is on this Administration. I do^not mean to intimate any per- 
sonal dishonor, but the groveling worship of the circulating 
business dollar, the fear of interfering with '* business interests,'* 
so paralyzes the arm of an Administration which owes its exist- 
ence to it that virile, game, American patriotism has no chance 
for action, certainly no chance in this body as now constituted 
and governed. 

I do not hesitate to assert my firm conviction that the real busi- 
ness of this country as represented in productive industries had 
rather, from a business standpoint, see actual war than to live 
under its constant threat. 

The real business men love this country and will make any sac- 
rifice for its honor. Their interest is enveloped in its ascendency. 
Its prosperity means their prosperity. But there is another busi- 
ness in this country that fattens on a fluctuating market. The 
game wins or loses in proportion to the doubt of war. 

Three hundred millions, it is alleged, changed hands between 
the bulls and the bears in the last war excitement on Wall street, 
yet that great amount means not one dollar of wealth produced; 
but it is the " great business interest" which must be protected 

31C3 



and which, wittingly or unwittingly, is being protected by tlio 
present policy of this Administration. 

In conclusion, Mr. SiDeaker, it becomes i^ertinent to ask Avliat 
course under all the circumstances should be pursued by us. The 
explosion of the Maine would have justified and would still jus- 
tify our temporary possession of the Island of Cuba and Spain's 
permanent expulsion. 

That has been allowed to pass. I hate hypocrisy, I loathe 
shams, I abominate pretenses. Let us be honest with ourselves 
and with the world. The simple truth is Spain is not a pleasant 
neighbor. She is too close to us; she can not control Cuba; she 
has no natural right to try. For twenty years and more her ef- 
forts in that direction have injured our commerce and hurt our 
trade with friendly neighbors. We have stood it long enough; 
we should endure it no longer. 

We wage no war of conquest. We do not want Cuba so much 
as we want peace in Cuba and friendly business relations with all 
her people. Spain stands in the way of this, and she must be re- 
moved. Waiving all questions now of sympathy with those pa- 
triots on the island; waiving for this argument all question of 
the Maine, I put my opposition to Spanish control of Cuba on her 
constant interference with our relations with a close and friendly 
neighbor. This is enough for me to feel that Cuba shall be free. 
If this brings war, let it come, and then the shame w^e have thus 
far borne and the humiliation we have suffered will be forgotten 
in the glory of our victories, and we can then feel that some atone- 
ment has been made by Spain for the insolence of her behavior 

and the murder of our men, 
3-163 



Proposed Auuexation of Hawaii. 



SPEECH 

OF 

HON, MAECUS A. SMITH, 

of arizona, 
In the House op Eepkesentatives, 

Monday, June 13, 1898. 

The House having under consideration the joint resolution (H. Res. 359) to 
provide for annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States- 
Mr. SMITH of Arizona said: 

Mr. Speaker: As a citizen of one of our Western Territories I 
protest against this unnecessary haste in annexing the Islands of 
Hawaii to our possessions, and especially do I protest when I be- 
lieve the real owners of those islands are opposed to annexation. 
Amid war's excitements and alarm we are apt to be swept from 
our feet and thrown into paths and policies dangerous to the future 
government of our country. When the war shall have ended and 
the smoke of battle cleared from our vision, when we shall have 
regained the thoughtful and reflective nature of peace, we shall 
have time enough to pass on these questions thoughtfully, philo- 
sophically, and, I trust, wisely. 

We had better admit to the Union our Territories before we be- 
gin this doubtful deal in islandic real estate. 

Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma are in every particular 
fully qualiiied for the duties and responsibilities of Statehood. I 
have so often described the resources of Arizona in committee and 
on this floor that I will not now detain the House with its repeti- 
tion. If you willfully refuse to justly or properly govern your 
present territory, what can we expect for Hawaii and what can 
she hope for herself when the hand of your avarice and greed is 
at her throat? 

Arizona, the fairest subdivision of North America, with bound- 
less resources, with a iK)pulation second in energy, enterprise, and 
education to no Congressional district represented on this floor, 

has been forced for thirty-five years to pay tribute to the States, 
10 3ica 



11 

and in all that weary time has received not one cent from the Fed- 
eral Treasury that was not due as a moral and legal obligation; 
and while the liand of taxation has been busy V7ith her property, 
the hand of despotism has kept silent her voice. 

I recall an incident in Boston Harbor that made history, yet 
taxation without representation is as wrong- now as it was then, 
and those of you who impose this on us are degenerate sons of 
sires who, rather than submit to such exaction, freely pledged 
their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. I could stand 
your treatment of us with more equanimity if we were more de- 
serving of it. But we do not deserve it at all. 

Mr. Speaker, it has been said that Arizona is indeed a land of 
sunshine and silver; a land where every farmer makes his own 
rain, v/here the rewards of industry are as unerring as the de- 
crees of God; a land where wonder treads on beauty's heels and 
riches rush to meet the earnest seeker; a land whose resources are 
as varied as the prismatic lights and splendors which bathe her 
sunsets in resplendent glory. And we cast all these away from 
our consideration and with avaricious eyes gaze across 2,100 miles 
of ocean's dreary waste and covet an island filled with a sugar 
trust, Chinese, Japanese, lepers, hula-hula dancers, and other vol- 
canoes. [Laughter.] 

If you prefer this company to our society as a State, we can 
stand it; but we would like your society better if you were more 
select, sirs. The greed of empire has led, and will lead, to the 
desti'uction of every nation that the world has marshaled on the 
fields of time. 

We are doing pretty well as compared vnth the nations of the 
earth. Whatever the proper position is to take with, regard to 
Hawaii hereafter, there is danger in action now. We should not 
be misled to hasty action by those visiting statesmen who spent 
nearly eight days in Hawaii and return to us as the representatives 
of the Hawaiian Republic in urging its admission to the Union. 
[Laughter.] 

I do not like the looks of these Trojan horses — Timeo Danaos et 
dona ferentes. No, sirs; I prefer, in the progress of a nation s 
prosperity, one wheat field in a former desert waving in full fruit- 
age at the touch of gentle breezes far above the elegance and grace 
a463 



12 

of any hnla-hnla dance in the most refined society of any island 
in all the seas. 

In a new nation— and we are j'et new and young — it is far bet- 
ter to see one happy home reared by honest Anglo-Saxon hands 
on the plains of the West than to have added to our body politic 
any number of Chinese or other alien cheap labor, dominated as 
they will always be by some enormous combine or trust. 

One-tenth of the money you will spend in fortifying Pearl Har- 
bor and providing otherwise for its defense would easily reclaim 
5,000,000 acres of desert land in the West, which would easily sup- 
port a population of English-speaking people of at least 5,000,000 
souls. Compare this with what you get in Hawaii and think be- 
fore you leap. Let not the siren song of some of our singers across 
the aisle lull our patriotic vigilance into fateful sleep. We have 
plenty to do at home. We have more land and more resources in 
Arizona alone, which Congress can easily encourage and perfect, 
than the whole Hawaiian Islands contain. 

Let justice, as well as charity, begin at home. Develop your 
own Territories before you attempt to acquire other lands. You 
will divert by this resolution the attention of States away from 
our western domain and fasten it on undesirable possessions in 
the seas. A desire to steal from the ignorant inhabitants of the 
islands will lessen the purpose of working to build homes on the 
plains or dig treasure from our mountains. 

The farther you remove our possessions the more credulous we 
become in hearing stories of the wealth which remote countries 
are handing out to all applicants, and swarms of people rush heed- 
lessly over the boundless treasures of the Western plains and 
mountains to follow this elusive will-o'-the-wisp across the seas. 
There are many objections to the annexation of these islands 
other than I have already stated. 

The population is objectionable. The last census shows the fol- 
lowing: 

Natives 39,504 

Chinese 25,407 

Japanese 21,616 

Portuguese 15,291 

American 3,080 

German 1,4.33 

English 2,250 

3463 



13 

How is our action in taking into our body politic the virus here 
shown to help us or anybody else except the sugar kings of the 
islands? We have passed laws against Chinese immigration to 
this country and have spent vast sums in keeping them out, and 
yet in this one act you make American citizens, or at least Ameri- 
can residents, of 25,000 Chinese, free to leave the cheap wages of 
Hawaii and come freely into our Western States and directly com- 
pete with our educated labor and break down still further the 
present small compensation given for a day of toil. 

Not only this, but the very floodgates of China would be opened 
upon us through Hawaii. Every applicant for admission would 
prove by 100 witnesses that he was a resident of Hawaii at the 
time of its annexation, and the bars would be let down. There is 
not an intelligent body of organized labor in this country that 
does not oppose at this time the resolution now before us. What- 
ever may be the proper course to pursue with these islands here- 
after, and I am not now indicating what that course should be, 
this is of all times the worst to act. 

The war which was thrust on us by the brutality of Spain is now 
in full progress. We are virtually in possession of the Philippine 
Islands by the unparalleled skill and courage of Dewey and his 
men. We are preparing to invade Cuba and Puerto Rico. Peace 
will come some day, and in the settlement of its terms the future 
policy of this Government toward these islands can be settled all 
at once, without this Hawaiian precedent as a landmark for our 
guidance. 

Rather than commit my country now to the imperial policy of 
colonial accretion and colonial government, I would turn the 
money necessary to such a course to the development of our in- 
ternal resources, and reap thereby a richer harvest than the wild- 
est dream will ever see growing on these coveted islands. 

I live in the West, and I love it and its people. Their hope and 
mine is to see it grow and flourish, as it will with half the help 
your course now offers to the foreign hordes I have just mentioned. 
1 am driven by these reflections to an advocacy of further inter- 
nal improvements instead of prex)aring by your present policy to 
increase the Army in time of peace, and thus place labor under a 

tax to drones and nonproducers. 1 would put an equal army at 
3103 



14 

work to make glad the waste places, an army of industrious work- 
ingmen employed at fair wages, and bringing into fruitage lands 
now barren and worthless. 

I notice with concern and recognize with disgust the fact that 
those gentlemen on this floor whose zeal is the most ardent to 
spend money, incur debts, take risks of foreign complications 
and domestic discord in aid of a worthless island 2,000 miles and 
more from any present American harbor, are the very identical 
gentlemen who refuse to let one dollar go to the necessary devel- 
opment of our Territories and even refuse to give us the right to 
elect our own officers. 

Whatever through your wisdom or folly you may do with these 
Hawaiian Islands, I pray God you will protect them from the be- 
nign rule of present Territorial government. Arizona is more en- 
titled to home rule than these Japs and Chinese are to annexa- 
tion. I protest against your preference. 

Mr. Speaker, I will detain the House no longer, except to give 
notice, if the opportunity will be permitted me, to move an amend- 
ment, by way of a substitute, which will leave Hawaii in statu 
quo and give statehood to Arizona. If this be ruled out of order, 
I shall move to amend by adding at the end of the resolution the 
bill I introduced, the purpose of which was to permit Arizona to 
elect her own officers. Against that bill no reasonable objection 
has been urged or can be urged. To refuse this is a political 
crime. [Applause.] 

[Note.— Mr. Smith subsequently offered to amend the resolu- 
tion by adding a home rule provision for Arizona, but the Speaker 
held the amendment out of order and thus no vote was had on 
the amendment.] 

3463 



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